Last week, Congressman Ed Markey inadvertently injected some daring political thinking and a touch of historical imagination into the race to fill the US Senate seat vacated by John Kerry's appointment as secretary of state.

Menino's State of the City addresses are less political speeches and more civic homilies — big-hearted sermons aimed at keeping a healthy majority of voters firmly in the mayor's pews. These speeches are about consolidating and renewing power, rather than promoting actionable policy.

This is the country we live in: not a single Wall Street executive has been indicted for crashing the world economy and gaming the financial system out of multi-billions in order to rip off an entire generation of hard-working Americans.

It appears that Congress, in an epic fit of bloody-mindedness that reflects the nation's delusional subservience to the National Rifle Association's death cult, will fail to outlaw semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity ammo clips.

Media tea leaves suggest the odds are long that you will act on former Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank's suggestion to appoint him to fill the temporary vacancy that will result when Senator John Kerry's appointment as secretary of state is confirmed, as it is expected to be.

If, in the wake of the mass killings in Newtown, Connecticut, Congress does not summon the will to vote to ban semiautomatic weapons with large-capacity clips, then the institution will have blood on its hands.

The Washington establishment got all riled up last week at the news that South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint was leaving the US Senate to take charge of the Heritage Foundation, a once-respected conservative think tank that today is largely — but not yet exclusively — a shill for right-wing revolutionaries and a toady for the greediest and most socially insensitive corporations in America.

Despite it being against Massachusetts's best interests, our view is that Senator John Kerry is about as perfect a candidate to be the nation's top diplomat as can be found in either political or policy circles.

Widespread hopes among democracy-loving Europeans and Americans that the grassroots revolt against authoritarian governments of various stripes would usher in a new era of tolerance, peace, and understanding have not gone according to script.

If the just-concluded national election proves anything, it is that the Republican Party lives in a parallel universe, with its own brand of reality that is dangerously disconnected from the experience of most Americans.

Two things stand between almost certain economic and social catastrophe: the prospect of the Democrats maintaining — or expanding — their majority in the Senate, and the reelection of President Barack Obama.

The most closely watched congressional race in Massachusetts is being fought in the Sixth District, on Boston's North Shore, between Democratic incumbent John Tierney and his Republican challenger Richard Tisei.

When voters go to the polls on November 6 to choose between incumbent Republican Scott Brown and Democrat Elizabeth Warren, they will be doing more than casting a ballot for one of Massachusetts's two US senators.